Sharing prints.

[Grandpa Ron]

Okay, you have a couple of B&W prints you would like to email to your family and friends. You have already accepted the fact that you are not Ansell Adams.

How do you digitize them at home? My best guess it to use my printer/scanner.

For those that have tried it, how well does it work?

 

[waday]

When I had a bunch of old family photos that I wanted to scan and share, I bought a flatbed scanner for this purpose. It worked well, and the software was easy enough to use. I then uploaded the pictures to a website to share electronically.

 

[Derrel]

With the way people look at Photos these days, often on a smart phone screen, you might as well just take a good digital photo of the pictures, and send that electronically via email, or text message, or upload it to your website/sharing place.

 

[Designer]

Okay, you have a couple of B&W prints you would like to email to your family and friends. You have already accepted the fact that you are not Ansell Adams.

How do you digitize them at home? My best guess it to use my printer/scanner.

For those that have tried it, how well does it work?

It works fine. Pay attention to the settings of your printer driver, and play around with it some to optimize the resolution. Mine has a B&W setting, for, presumably, B&W photos.

Also, remember that they will be looking at the file (and possibly printing it) on a variety of devices, so don't be surprised to hear that the images will draw some negative criticism. Make the scans look good on your own display.

 

[Dave442]

I like to just grab my camera and take a picture of the picture. It gives a file that is ready to send to family by email and the results are that family will then say thank you. I found it was way too much time to scan and edit on the computer when the final image was going to be sent out in a relatively small size by email.

 

[Gary A.]

The photos linked below, were digitized more than 15 years ago and uploaded to my photo site. I suspect scanner hardware and software has significantly improved since I first scanned those B&W photos. I think your modern printer/scanner should be absolutely fine.

My Scanned B&W Photo Gallery.